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38 out of 46 people found the following comment useful :- Rough content, but beautifully bleak and harrowing, 26 April 2005 Author: soymilk from East Anglia, UK
People are probably right enough when they comment that this entire film essentially hinges on Harvey Kietel's impassioned performance as the corrupt and deeply troubled lieutenant of the title. Which shouldn't necessarily be taken as a shortcoming - an engrossing lead is the one key thing that any one-man character study like this needs in order to flourish, after all. Whether sobbing, howling or clenching his jaws in anguish, or else hanging his head and sipping liquor in silence, his acting here is always raw, convincing and utterly compelling; the kind of portrayal you'd be hard-pressed to take your eyes off. The exact identity of his character is never revealed, but the title informs us he's a 'bad lieutenant', a label seemingly confirmed by his tendency to indulge in substance abuse, work up heavy gambling debts and even, on occasion, pull over a couple of young female drivers and use them as motivation for his own self-pleasure. Very lurid, and yet the way that Kietel plays him also makes feel completely human. He conveys such pain and desperation behind his each and every immoral action that they never come across as nearly as shocking or vulgar to watch as they are harrowing. It's this alone that enables 'Bad Lieutenant' as a whole to reach the true extent of its potential - what could easily be read off as a plethora of fury, drug-taking, masturbation and full-frontal nudity in practice translates very aptly into a sad and striking depiction of a despondent man who's lost his ability to see goodness in anything in life, and who's sinking ever deeper beneath the weight of all those answers being continuously sought in the wrong places. As you've probably worked out by now, this isn't exactly the balmiest movie you could spending your time with (might be wrong, but I don't think there's a single light-hearted moment to be found in the entire screenplay), but if you can bring yourself to look past the sourness on the surface and instead feel sympathy for this bad lieutenant, as Kietel's involving performance invites us to do, then you'll find some considerable power lurking in its bleakness.So, while it's Harvey Kietel who really (and rightly) brings things together in 'Bad Lieutenant' and makes it the affecting near-masterpiece that it is, it would be unfair of me to completely overlook Ferrara's role in this equation. He's provided the context against which our centrepiece man must function - a world so run-down, sombre and nihilistic that trying to find redemption round here seems not only impossible, but practically pointless. The mood is well-set by the ever-overcast skies; killing, rape and robbery are rampant, and the Lt isn't exactly given a great deal to aspire to in his day-to-day life. Kietel and his character are admittedly the only things here that come off as particularly outstanding - the vast majority of supporting characters are really all just part of this one big daunting backdrop, with dialogue, screen time and development kept to a strict minimum in each case - though personally I look at this as being more of an additional strength than as a weakness. That everyone else around him always seems so distant only increases the overall feelings of detachment and isolation that draw us deeper into the Lt's outlook.Christian faith and symbolism are pretty integral to the overall themes of this movie, but even being non-religious myself I find I can still get a good deal of emotional investment in it. It delivers its underlying issues - of non-judgement and the potential for goodness in even the most repellent of sinners - with acute precision, as reflected in the investigation concerning the raping of a young nun which the plot loosely revolves around. While this heinous crime only serves to strengthen the Lt's belief in the general depravity of the world around him, the nun herself has found solace in her refusal to condemn those who wronged her, viewing them instead as victims as their own confusion and despair. There are of course some fairly sharp parallels between this scenario and the Lt's own personal predicament, which any viewer who's really come to feel for him will recognise - as displeasing as some of the things he himself gets up to may be (and the way he incorporates further crime into his efforts to uphold the law), there's that challenge lying at the centre of every scene as to whether or not we're really in any position to pass judgement upon him. All things considered, is it truly a bad lieutenant that he is at heart or just, well, a sad one?I don't imagine that everyone will quite take to the conclusion this eventually leads to (and which I'm not going to give away here), but considering just how weighty a lot of the issues it addresses really are, you never get the impression that Ferrara ever intended to come up with a cut-and-dried solution of any sorts. Instead, he and Kietel have put together a polished and powerful piece of film-making that, though it deals with some pretty disagreeable and, at the time at least, controversial subject matter, is so rich in great acting (well, one great performance, but it's easily worth the input of an entire cast) and slick atmospherics that it becomes entirely captivating. In the end, it's the surprising amount of depth and emotional muscle that it carries, and not the notorious reputation that it garnered, that 'Bad Lieutenant' really deserves to be remembered for - and remembered I hope it always will be. Another great in early 90s cinema.Grade: A
39 out of 50 people found the following comment useful :- Hard to watch - but worth it, 20 September 2001 Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
Lets clear one thing up straight away....this is a hard film to watch. I don't think anyone who likes it is actually saying it is entertaining or fun! This is a dark look at one man's struggle to match what he was taught about Jesus and Catholism and love with the filth and depravity in his world (the crime), his life (his gambling and drug addiction) and in his life (his desires as seen in the scene with the two girls).Basically the story follows a cop on the case of a nun that was raped. However this is not really a sum-up of the film. For me the main issue is the struggle of how the Nun forgives those that raped her and how the cop cannot understand why she would do this and not feel the hatred and bitterness that he does. This is the most powerful section of the film and is even more powerful when you put the rest of the filth around it.Keitel is amazing - this is his best performance. Whether he is crying at Jesus, masturbating over teenagers or sobbing while or drugs he is totally convincing. His struggle to forgive and to allow others to be forgiven is part of his wider journey towards redemption.If you let it touch you then it is powerful, the end being especially moving. If you only see what he does as actions with no feelings, no emotions and no reason then you'll probably hate it.This is not a fun movie. Even if you like it, you'll still find it challenging viewing but ultimately rewarding.
43 out of 60 people found the following comment useful :- Nothing bad about this movie, 13 April 2000 Author: pizowell
Gritty, raw, disturbing, and powerful. Just a few words that describe Abel Ferrara's provocative Bad Lieutenant. It chronicles the downward spiral of a drug addict cop investigating the rape of a nun. It contains one of the best performances ever captured on film by Harvey Keitel. Ferrara's masterpiece is a story of the evils of man and one mans quest for redemption. You'll never forget this movie.
30 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :- deeply unpleasant movie with a star performance, 19 May 2004 Author: didi-5 from United Kingdom
'Bad Lieutenant' is not an easy film to watch. The lead character on the surface has no redeeming virtues - he's corrupt, he's sexually and morally deviant, he is really and truly on the slide. A nun's rape is supposed to awaken his conscience in some way and affect him so deeply that he almost gets to be a decent citizen, but for the bleak and empty ending. All this would be so much hogwash if it wasn't for the stunning lead performance of Harvey Keitel, certainly taking his acting talent right to the edge to give us a nothing-held-back portrait of his character. There are several scenes of great power (and one or two which are deeply repellent); certainly this isn't a film you can easily forget when you've seen it.
26 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :- Intense, subtle, and in some ways unique- Bad Lieutenant is the sleeper of 1992, 23 November 2003 Author: MisterWhiplash from United States
Abel Ferrara has on his hands a small masterwork of one man's existence in the doldrums, and he has such a way of dealing with "the streets" as a perpetually gritty, hellish world in a movie that I didn't disbelieve it for a second. In a sense he can be compared to the likes of Scorsese, however he certainly works in a different frame of honesty in mind in depicting his lead character and those he encounters. At the core of this extremely well made, unconventional film is the best performance Harvey Keitel delivered in the nineties, a bravado piece of work in which he bares all of the qualities that can make up the badness in the lieutenant. The Lieutenant spends little time with his kids, and when he does is hardly happy, and when he leaves them he goes into the underworld to do coke, crack and heroin, gulps down alcohol like Evian, and tries to cling onto whatever dignity he has left in betting on the Mets in the championship series. When a startling case occurs - a nun is raped by two street kids - the lieutenant is on the scene, however fogged in his muck, and can't understand how somebody, even a nun, can forgive such a crime. This leads into the third act of the film, and this is where the work propels itself into a higher ground, mature, spiritual, and ultimately fascinating in every aspect. Overall, Bad Lieutenant is a lean, un-abashed first-person singular in a rather sophisticated delivery. We are delivered a character, like Alex in Clockwork Orange for example, who is not even a half-way decent person. But just by the way Ferrara and Keitel bring us into his world, and the details of his existence, a viewer can start to understand that the film works on other levels besides those of a conventional "all around bad-cop" story.
31 out of 42 people found the following comment useful :- Don't expect a nice story, and you won't be disappointed., 28 February 1999 Author: Tophee from Morrisville, PA
Nasty Film, shows the downward spiral of a dirty cop as his drug and gambling addictions take him deeper and deeper into despair. There is no compassion for this man, and indeed, he asks for none. The conclusion to the film is really the only ending that could have been believable, but still no compassion. While this film is not one to watch for entertainment value, it is a good one to watch for plot and character acting value. Don't expect a nice story, and you won't be disappointed.
29 out of 41 people found the following comment useful :- Bedlam, but no Bethlehem, 5 February 2002 Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico
What would this movie be without Harvey Keitel? It's so easy to see how this production could have gone terribly wrong. Just put Brad Depp in the lead role. There isn't a laugh in this story, and Keitel makes you believe that there isn't a laugh to be had in the entire world. His movements are sluggish, his voice an exhausted and perfunctory mumble. Except when he becomes agitated over the thought of winning money on a bet. His eyelids droop and his lips smack while a hooker puts on his tie and administers a mainliner, and afterward he slowly slumps over in his chair like a stroke victim. That scene alone, in its long takes, would have established him as a powerful performer if he weren't already recognized as one. In two other scenes he displays a hair-raising talent. The first is when he is drunk and crazed on some kind of unearthly dope with two women and we see him naked, standing in front of the camera, and he seems to rise on tiptoes, his tensed arms lift from his sides, his fingers fluttering, and his face becomes a grimace of tortured pleasure as he keens toward the ceiling. I've never seen anything quite like it. The second is even more gripping. Drunk, stoned, abject, he crawls into a church (his lapsed Catholicism has emerged only gradually during the story) and, muscular control disintegrating, he falls to his knees in the aisle and wails, howls, and ululates like a wounded animal, expressing his self loathing and accusing Christ of not helping him while at the same time beseeching his forgiveness and help. It's hard to imagine anyone doing this scene better. It brings to mind Cagney's outburst in the big house in White Heat. There are other scenes that are superficially more shocking -- the bad lieutenant whacking away as he coerces two naive New Jersey women into being naughty in front of him -- but Keitel plays the scene morosely, as if engaging in a biologically necessary but essentially uninterestingly quotidian act, something to be gotten out of the way. The film itself, alas, doesn't quite match the quality of Keitel's performance. There basically aren't any other important performances. The story is all Keitel's. There is no explanation of how he came to be the thoroughly rotten piece of moral filth that he has, but I'm not sure that's required. (Explanations for complex behavior tend to invite a certain glibness in writers: his Mom always preferred his brother, or his potty training was deficient or something. We really don't need his Rosebud.) The nun who is raped is preternaturally beautiful, a glowing creature almost grateful for the opportunity to forgive. She looks particularly radiant when naked. MY nuns were never like that! And, let's face facts, we didn't need an image of the living Christ appearing in the aisle of the church, especially since he looks like a skinny, long-haired, made-up actor. The black woman, into whom he changes, would have sufficed. The most confusing and maybe the weakest part of the movie is the lieutenant's idea of redemption. Is it a good deed when you finally corner the two unrepentant skunks who raped the nun, sit down on a couch and smoke some dope with them, give them stolen money, and put them on a bus to make a getaway? That's his idea of mimicking the nun and her forgiveness? What's to prevent these two nun rapists from giving yet another nun a chance to forgive them a month or two down the road? This is a bleak and tragic story, partly because after all is said and done, the lieutenant seems to have no idea of how to turn Bedlam back into Bethlehem.
21 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :- Deep, dark, and disturbing--but contains a surprisingly spiritual theme. ***1/2 (out of four), 19 September 2001 Author: Blake French (baffilmcritic@cs.com) from USA
BAD LIEUTENANT / (1992) ***1/2 (out of four)By Blake French: Abel Ferrara's "Bad Lieutenant" could be a solid tale of spiritual redemption if not for the pervasive material through which the film demonstrates its immorality. It contrasts the most disturbing, obscene human behavior with compassion and forgiveness, but the extreme nature of the content and the film's insistence on it's portrayal swindles the spiritual impact. For once a movie deserves the notorious NC-17 rating-the Motion Picture Association of America's most restrictive emblem placed on movies submitted for a rating-but the story contains a message that's more humble and spiritual than most inoffensive productions about spirituality. These filmmakers may or may not realize the potential religious impact their product is capable of achieving. It's a very religious film; churches could use this to demonstrate the power of forgiveness and the strength of God's love. Unfortunately many audiences will misinterpret the graphic adult content and strong language as excessively dirty-but this is not a dirty movie. The content is necessary for the exceptional contrast to work. It displays the goodness in people through their wrong doings. Though I still wouldn't recommend gathering the kids around to watch this movie. Harvey Keitel plays a character whom the movie calls only "Bad Lieutenant." He's at a stage in his life when human characteristics no longer matter. Filled with fury, need, and depression, his temporary remedies-sex, drugs, and gambling-no longer fulfill his hunger for pleasure. But his family doesn't care anymore. He drops his kids off for school, does bad things during the day, and comes home to collapse on the couch at night. This character does not imagine himself as anything but bad. He interrupts a grocery store robbery only to let the thieves go on a bribe. He buys drugs from drug dealers in exchange for their immunity. He stops a pair of young women in a car only to blackmail them into an unpleasant form of verbal rape. The story takes a twist. Several low lives brutally rape a young nun. The nun, who knows her rapists, refuses to reveal their identities because she forgives them for their crime. The bad lieutenant cannot believe a victim can forgive such an atrocity. If this woman can forgive her debtors, could anyone forgive his sins as well? Whether the bad lieutenant turns his life around I will leave you to discover. But this idea might be a side issue in the plot. "Bad Lieutenant" displays more of an interest in the dirty lifestyle of the title character than in his decision to seek forgiveness for his sins. Only during the final minutes does Keitel's character realize his choices. Surprisingly, however, the film's ending takes the easy way out in a complete refusal to look redemption in the eye. This ending blends in with the events because of stark, honest realism, but we never comprehend the character's intentions for the future. Dark and cringe-inducing, "Bad Lieutenant" is not a fun movie to watch and don't expect to hold your popcorn down if you walk in unprepared. Abel Ferrara and Zoe Lund wrote the script looking into deep, private crevices of the human soul. They travel to places many people will find extremely uncomfortable. It's a harrowing character study portrayed through an unreserved, courageous performance. Harvey Keitel takes a huge risk here-most actors would not want such a character to follow their public image. But Keitel does not hesitate to characterize the bad lieutenant without compromise, mercy, or restraint. Hats off to you, Harvey.
18 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :- Good movie, 9 May 2001 Author: mattymatt4ever from Jersey City, NJ
What more can I say? Keitel gives an astounding performance. Then again, when has he let us down? I was able to find some interesting parallels to "Mean Streets." Aside from the use of "Pledging my Love" by Johnny Ace, it explores the theme of Catholic guilt and how one's temptation and hunger for evil can weaken spiritual judgments. The climactic scene is great, in which Keitel (literally) comes face to face with Jesus. I wasn't a big fan of "Mean Streets" and think this film better explores its Catholic themes. One may perceive this film to be sinful, and it received tons of controversy. It's very rare that a movie is able to show rape of a nun, and get away Scott-free with the MPAA. I think the NC-17 rating was mostly on account of the explicit nudity and sex. I don't know why the hell people are trying to scare viewers by regarding this movie as "graphically violent." About all we really see are aftermaths of violence. However, the language is extremely blunt, and that's about the only warning I can give. Of course, religious activists might protest its use of footage of Jesus on a cross and the aforementioned rape scene, but they simply have to look closer at what message Ferrara is trying to bring out. Cinema is an art form often misjudged by the prudish. The scene where Keitel pulls the two young girls over is classic, and I loved its darkly humorous element. "Bad Lieutenant" is an impressive character study, and though it occasionally gets meandering and repetitive and seems to be missing something (which I might be able to identify on a second viewing), it's a moving story with terrific acting. I wasn't too thrilled with the other Ferrara pieces I've seen, "King of New York" and "The Funeral," but I was younger and I think I just had trouble understanding the subtle messages he delivers in his films. Of course, he specializes in gritty urban dramas like this, being a Bronx native what do you expect, so something like "Bad Lieutenant" naturally wouldn't appeal to general audiences. It's unpleasant, though somewhat humorous, but life can be the same way. You can't spend your whole life watching "The Wizard of Oz." Every once in a while, you have to take a break and watch graphic character studies like this and learn a little something. After seeing this movie, I'm curious about checking out some more of Ferrara's work, because I know he has talent. I can tell this a movie I will have to watch again, because it's not easily understood the first time around, but I'm sure there's hidden messages that just flew over my head. I still think the film could've had more substance, but it's still an impressive work.My score: 7 (out of 10)
10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :- I know there is no plot however..........., 9 June 2000 Author: Corleone-29 from Tampa
All right let's get this out of the way. This is not a great picture. In fact I will bet 98 percent of the public would find it absolutely repulsive. Make that 99 percent. Hell, even I didn't understand it the first time I saw it. But what I realized the second time was brilliant method acting. And that ladies and gents is what makes this film shine. There is no solid plot, no supporting characters, and no reason to feel anything but disgust for Harvey Keitel. However, you find me another actor who could have dug as low as Keitel did or take as many chances and I will bet you that it will take more than the time to cook a frozen cardboard pizza. It is hard to view a soiled life like Keitel was leading without being on the road yourself which wouldn't be pretty. The backdrop of a baseball series and Keitel losing chunks of money made it even crazier. Again I have to say absolutely great acting. Keitel has so many good scenes that this may be a career role for him. I give him a multitude of credit for taking the chance to play a totally unlovable character. Watch this movie at your own risk and know going in that this is an outlier in the sense of normal movie making. Don't bother grabbing a flashlight or even a spotlight and trying to find a plot. There isn't one. Just sit back and watch Keitel spiral down like a squirrel who missed the branch.
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